Places

Genres and Modes

Context

Related Groups

William Beckford’s Vathek, An Arabian Tale (1786) is
perhaps the most bizarre response to Europe’s love affair with all
things ‘Oriental’ in the eighteenth-century. The age witnessed a
rich immigration of Eastern art and culture, as evidenced by
figures such as Mary Elizabeth Wortley Montagu, who ‘smuggled’ in
her letters on Turkish society and customs after a two-year stay in
1716-1718. Once the letters were finally published in 1762, the
market had already been established by the French translation of an
Arabic classic, The Thousand and One Nights. Antoine
Galland’s translation, Les Mille et une nuits (1704-1717),
quickly became a bestseller, reaching eighty …